BUCK CLEVEN HAD been president of Webber College in Babson Park for about a year when the trouble with the cars and trucks became intolerable. Local concrete cowboys had taken to tearing up the campus on Friday and Saturday nights by driving across the lawns.

For a time, Cleven let his security guards deal with the problem, but it persisted. One Friday night he instructed the guard on duty to call him if there was any trouble. Around 2 the next morning, the guard called. A car was ripping up the grounds.

''I'll handle it,'' said Cleven, who in those days lived in a house on the campus. He grabbed his 12-gauge, double-barreled shotgun, walked across a parking lot and waited until the offending driver came blasting through a hedge, his headlights pointed in Cleven's direction.

''I yelled at him to stop,'' Cleven says, ''but he took off. He probably thought I was just some old man who wouldn't shoot.''

Cleven took aim at the right rear tire and let go both barrels.

At first he thought he'd missed because the car kept going, but on inspection of the lawn, he found various pieces of the car strewn about.

''People asked me afterwards how I'd have felt if I'd hit the gas tank and blown the car up,'' Cleven says. ''When I drew down on it, that very thought crossed my mind. 'What if I blow that car up?' I thought. Then I pulled the trigger.''

A good number of people at Webber College and in nearby Lake Wales were not surprised by the shotgunning of the trespasser's car. In the preceding year, Cleven had brought much controversy and upheaval to the school. ''I admit I've done some bizarre things,'' Cleven says, ''but when I came down here this place was a rat's nest, in dire need of some serious shaking up. The physical plant was falling apart. The faculty was asleep at the wheel, teaching six or nine hours a semester (all full-time fauclty now teach 15 hours per semseter and spend two hours in their offices for every three they teach). The students were running the school.

''Webber was losing $200,000 a year. This is a business school and it should damn well be run like a business. When I got here they were in the process of selling off school land to pay the bills. Anyone with half a brain knows you can't run a successful business by selling off the fixed assets. Our fixed assets have more than doubled in the past 6 1/2 years, and I'm in the process of buying back the property they sold off. There are rules here now and if they're not obeyed the student or faculty member is gone.''

People would tell Cleven that if he continued to be such a tough administrator no one would like him. ''Hell, who cares,'' he says. ''This is a business, not a country club. Between 8 and 5 I have no friends.''

CLEVEN SITS BACK IN THE DESK CHAIR IN his roomy but unpretentious office on the Webber campus. He is 67, of medium height and build, with a pouchy but tough face. He looks remarkably like an aging James Cagney. His mouth is a thin line of determination. His eyes, slightly hooded, are ice-blue. His expression can range from paternal bonhomie to cold ruthlessness and back again in the course of a single sentence.

On the desk in front of him are a stack of English compositions. During the day -- which begins for Cleven before 7 a.m. and ends near midnight -- in between administrative meetings, faculty conferences, trips to various parts of the campus and meetings with students, he will correct them.

He is an exacting, demanding, and, according to a number of his faculty, students and staff, tyranical man. ''They call me a dictator,'' he says. ''I'm not. I'm a benevolent despot.''

Still, Cleven expects no more from those in his kingdom than he's willing to contribute himself. In addition to his administrative duties, he carries a course load of 12 hours per semester, teaching courses in remedial English -- ''Bonehead English,'' he calls it -- statistics and management. He works at the fund-raising Bingo games in the student center, and insists on paying for his meal at the special monthly dinners -- called ''Webber Nights'' -- he's instituted.

Cleven was running a steel company in Pennsylvania before he took the job at Webber. He came to the school knowing there'd be problems but he didn't think they'd amount to much, not after dealing with union officials. ''I thought I'd do some fishing and relax. Little did I know.

''At the end of my first week at Webber I went home, poured myself three fingers of Jack Daniels and said, 'Well, I'm going to have to go right through this place from top to bottom. I thought it would be a quick deal but it obviously isn't going to be, and now my pride's at stake so I'm going to do whatever it takes to make this place go.' ''

Shortly after this talk with himself, he called his first faculty meeting. ''I'm going to tell you a story,'' he said, ''and then I'm going to close this meeting.''